because it would install the R-forge version of the survival package over the version that came with R-2.12.0.

I could probably use some combination of the information from old.packages and packageStatus to determine which packages exist only on R-forge, but I wanted to ask if there was an easier way before building a custom solution.

1 Answer
1

# 1. Get the list of packages you have installed,
# use priority to exclude base and recommended packages.
# that may have been distributed with R.
pkgList <- installed.packages(priority='NA')[,'Package']
# 2. Find out which packages are on CRAN and R-Forge. Because
# of R-Forge build capacity is currently limiting the number of
# binaries available, it is queried for source packages only.
CRANpkgs <- available.packages(
contriburl=contrib.url('http://cran.r-project.org'))[,'Package']
forgePkgs <- available.packages(
contriburl=contrib.url('http://r-forge.r-project.org', type='source')
)[,'Package']
# 3. Calculate the set of packages which are installed on your machine,
# not on CRAN but also present on R-Force.
pkgsToUp <- intersect(setdiff(pkgList, CRANpkgs), forgePkgs)
# 4. Update the packages, using oldPkgs to restrict the list considered.
update.packages(checkBuilt=TRUE, ask=FALSE,
repos="http://r-forge.r-project.org",
oldPkgs=pkgsToUp)
# 5. Profit?